Bauer Alumnus Opens Houston’s First 24-Hour Doughnut Café
Edose Ohen (MBA ’13) Reimagines Traditional Breakfast Treat
Published on July 24, 2014
Edose Ohen opens Glazed, a gourmet doughnut bakery, to the public on Aug. 29. The 2013 Bauer College MBA alum got the idea for the establishment during a marketing course.
There’s no denying it – most everyone loves a hot, fresh doughnut.
Edose Ohen, who earned his MBA from the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston in 2013, is banking on it. He’ll open Houston’s first 24-hour gourmet doughnut café on August 29, with a soft opening on July 26.
Ohen’s new business is called Glazed and will feature fresh, handmade doughnuts and a variety of other sweet treats with unique flavor combinations alongside in-house roasted coffee.
Ohen says the idea for Glazed came to him during a marketing course in the Bauer MBA program that focused on identifying and segmenting markets. In addition to studying the material, the course required students to put the learning into action by assessing the viability of a proposed business concept.
For the assignment, Ohen created a survey to determine if Houstonians would be interested in a gourmet doughnut shop, something he’d first envisioned during his undergraduate career when one of his uncles started a traditional doughnut shop on Highway 59 and Hillcroft.
“Once I realized that the market actually existed, I went through the process of making the business plan, which was good because everything I was doing while I was in school was applicable to the plan, and it all worked out,” Ohen added.
As a Bauer student, he learned about running all facets of a business and getting each process just right. Knowing how to segment the business, from operations management to finance and accounting is important to end with a functional understanding of business, Ohen added. The ability to piece the business together was important in opening the café.
“One of the things I identified in my planning is that for doughnut shops in Houston, with the exceptions of major players with a national presence, there’s really not a lot of marketing or targeting and segmenting,” he added.
Ohen plans to reach that untapped market through Glazed, which is located beneath mid-rise apartments in the bustling Texas Medical Center and will deliver to the University of Houston campus.
The café has a modern, relaxed atmosphere, perfect for a late-night cup of coffee with friends or a study session, Ohen said. The kitchen is behind a glass wall, showing customers the entire baking process, from kneading to frying.